


and yet, thou wouldst not love me

by thegirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, First one to find them all gets a fic request!, Henry VIII AU, Historian POV, I originally started filling this as crack but then it got Serious, I've slipped a lot of easter eggs in here referring to real historical events, Kink Meme, Multi, Rhaegar is mad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9659111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: In which Rhaegar Targaryen becomes Westeros' very own Henry VIII, and has six wives - one who died, two who were beheaded, two who were divorced, and one who survived.Prompt from Valar Morekinks.Title from 'Greensleeves'; a song claimed to have been written by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn.





	1. Elia Martell

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wasn't going to post this until it was complete, but then my computer decided that I don't have Microsoft Word anymore. Even though I do. I had, I think, a completely justified panic as I 'wasn't authorized' to access any of my word files, finally accessed it through WordPad (a pale, pale imitation of it's namesake), and decided to slap what I have got up here before anything else can go wrong. So... hope you enjoy?

**Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,  
But still thou hadst it readily.  
Thy music still to play and sing;  
And yet thou wouldst not love me.**

* * *

 

Theirs was not a love match. It is fair to say that the closest to love they ever achieved was a kind of fondness, although given half the chance many said that Elia would have given Rhaegar her heart and more. The prince’s fondness grew thin when Elia had three miscarriages in as many years. When finally Elia managed to bring a pregnancy to term, Rhaegar was rewarded with his much desired girl – the first of his so called ‘three heads’.

He calls her Rhaenys, gives her Summerhall, large swathes of land in the Crownlands and named multiple ships after her before she was even a nameday old – _The Princess of the Sea_ and _The Lady Rhaenys_ being just some of those. But Rhaenys Targaryen alone was not good enough, and soon his mind drifts away from his living child to the future of Westeros, to the Long Night, and his prophecy. He needs his three heads – and she is the least important of the three, in his eyes. So again, he and Elia go through the same routine of desperately trying to provide an heir to the Seven Kingdoms. It is a vicious cycle, that many at court would see repeated over many years.

In a letter recovered from Sunspear’s archives, Elia writes to her younger brother Oberyn ‘The Red Viper’ Martell, dated 285 AC: _...my lord is always wroth when my moonblood comes. He will not stop speaking about the Prince that was Promised from the prophecy. He has not visited Rhaenys for at least a sennight now: I don’t believe he would know his own daughter if she wasn’t dressed in all her finery. I pray to give him the prince he so desires, but I feel myself growing weaker as the days pass..._

Then, in the first few moons of 286 AC, a miracle occurred – Elia, long suspected by maesters to be infertile after the birth of Princess Rhaenys, managed to fall pregnant and felt the babe quicken. Rhaegar was full of joy, and in this year he sponsored artists, singers, septs, all to herald the coming of his son. Disaster struck when Elia went into premature labour: the babe survived just long enough to be baptized in the light of the Seven as Prince Aemon Targaryen – Rhaegar, when he heard the news that the boy would not survive the night, insisted that his planned name be changed from Aegon to Aemon, as Aegon was the name Rhaegar desired to give to his heir – a boy who would die so young was apparently unworthy of the name of his forefather, and of his Azor Ahai.

To say that Elia took her son’s death badly would be an understatement – she shut herself away for over a year, refusing to see anyone but a select few ladies, her brother when he visited, and Queen Rhaella. When she did eventually come out of confinement, contemporary sources tell us that she and Rhaegar were not on speaking terms, and would not be for the rest of their lives. She never forgot how he refused her son the name that they had agreed upon because of his short lifespan.

In the end, she did become pregnant a sixth time, although there were whispers that the child did not belong to her husband, for he was never permitted into her bedchambers. The prince did not seem to listen to the whispers, leading historians to gather that there must have been at least one occurrence of intercourse between the pair, even if it was an uncomfortable affair. He was not as exuberant as he had been at the last pregnancy, perhaps assuming it would end in disaster.

It was this final pregnancy that would kill Elia, and leave Rhaegar free to marry again, perhaps not a moment too soon due to the rumour that his eye had already begun to wander when faced with a cold marriage bed. This time, the babe was late, and too large to be safely delivered: Elia bled out soon after she finally gave Rhaegar his much awaited prince, who was given the coveted name Aegon. Sources differ as to whether he was named before or after Elia’s death.

When the princess’ death was announced, King’s Landing went into deep mourning. Elia had been massively popular due to her involvement in multiple charities, and as her casket was being taken back to Dorne in a golden casket – Queen Rhaella’s order, not Rhaegar’s – it was said that ‘the only dry eye in the city belonged to [Rhaegar]’. She left behind two children, Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon – Rhaenys was still a child when her mother passed, but it was said that all her life she wore a locket with a lock of her mother’s hair inside. Aegon was to never know his mother.

* * *

**Princess Elia Martell, Crown Princess of the Seven Kingdoms and Princess of Dorne, married 280 AC – 287 AC. Mother to Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon.**


	2. Lyanna Stark

**My men were clothed all in green,  
** **And they did ever wait on thee;**  
 **All this was gallant to be seen,**  
 **And yet thou wouldst not love me.**

* * *

Opinions differ as to when Lyanna Stark and Prince Rhaegar crossed paths for the first time – some believed it to be when he was wedded to his first wife, and the Starks attended the wedding, but many historians argue she was too young to be introduced to the Crown Prince. This argument is further undercut by a reference in Rhaegar’s letters to Lyanna saying _‘...the first time I saw you, I could not take my eyes off you. Years have passed, my love, and I still feel the same_.’ It could have been referring to her, but it's very unlikely that Rhaegar fell in love with a child of three and ten on his wedding day.

The second proposed first meeting is at the Tourney of Harrenhal, where secondary sources insist the prince spoke of how the prince was captivated by the Lady’s beauty behind closed doors, before the birth of Rhaenys when his attention was diverted back to his wife and child. Which of these was their first meeting, we may never know, but it is established in their letters that they had met before Lyanna was unexpectedly summoned to King’s Landing barely days after Princess Elia’s death.

Claims that the reason Lyanna kept on postponing her marriage to Robert Baratheon was because she was waiting for Elia’s death aren’t entirely unfounded: there is a swathe of evidence that Lyanna felt nothing for her betrothed, and had spent many years trying to find a way out of the engagement. Whether Rhaegar was simply a convenient way out of her despised engagement, as the only better suitor possible, or a secret lover of years, is unknown – there is no evidence of communication between the two of them before Elia’s death, for all that in later years they spoke of a long held love. Either way, as soon as Lyanna arrived in King’s Landing, she was animated, joyful and attentive to the prince who, by all accounts, was spell bound by his young bride. He wrote her poetry, love letters, composed songs and drew her likeness so many times that her face has been the basis for legends such as 'Helen of Norvos', when painted by Pypar the Younger - the face to launch a thousand ships.

Queen Rhaella was one of the few in the palace who disapproved, but one of many among the smallfolk – Elia had been much beloved, and Rhaegar moving on so quickly seemed proof that he had cared nothing for his first wife. Dorne was similarly offended, and it took decades before the rift between Sunspear and the Red Keep was bridged.

Rhaegar and Lyanna married a mere two moons after she arrived in the capital, but unlike the crowds at Rhaegar’s first wedding, many guests were noticeably absent and some smallfolk, as recounted in the personal diary of Lord Tarly, were ‘so angry at the match that they turned their backs on the Crown Prince and Princess as they left the Great Sept.’ Lyanna’s great unpopularity would persist for years, even after her death: today there are still rumours of her being a witch, just as there were at the time, which were attributed to a birthmark on her wrist in the shape of a crescent moon and her worshipping the Old Gods of the North opposed to The Seven.

The first year Lyanna and Rhaegar’s marriage was something out of a fairytale – they went on a tour of Essos, on a charm offensive as they wooed various courts and rulers into attractive trade agreements. The timing of this tour was particularly fortunate – whilst Rhaegar and Lyanna were on their last stop, in Braavos, before they prepared to sail back across the Narrow Sea, King Aerys II died from sepsis - at least that was the official story. He was known to cut himself frequently on the Iron Throne (earning him the rather unkind moniker of King Scab among the court) and one day one of these cuts became infected to the point that it was lethal. As recorded in the Grand Maester's journal, when asked if he would consent to having his lower leg amputated – as that was where the infection was – the king laughed, and instead called for a white hot flame. His last words were apparently ‘fire cannot kill a dragon, fools!' (Although these records were not discovered until centuries after the fact, and the Red Keep instead decided to put out that he died in his sleep from the original infection, under the Queen's instruction.)

Fire could, most definitely, kill a dragon, as proved not only in his case but in the case of Rhaenyra Targaryen, Aegon III and a host of other Targaryens who met their end to flames. He died around an hour after his applied the flame to his wound, which was said to ‘melt the skin around the bone’. Unlike Princess Elia, very few people wept for Aerys, and the man he’d become. And thus, Rhaegar and Lyanna returned as king and queen, without any suspicion over an 'accident' being arranged by the prince.

The coronation was met with even more hostility than the wedding, due to Rhaegar and Lyanna having a joint coronation, rather than one for each of them as was custom – many felt that Lyanna was undeserving of the special honour, and Elia was the one who deserved to be crowned after suffering for so many years at the hands of Aerys. One of Lyanna’s letters to her younger brother references the reception she received: _oh Ben, they cheered for my lord husband, but not for me. Why do they hate me so?_

Whether Lyanna simply didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand, is unclear. But as more duties were heaped upon her as queen, and there was no babe on the horizon, her relationship with Rhaegar began to grow distant. He was overheard confiding in his kingsguard, Ser Arthur Dayne, about his wife: _‘she does not understand that we are servants to the people now... she seems most young to me at times such as this.’_ It was a criticism that Lyanna soon began hearing on all sides: she was too naive, too flighty and childlike to be queen and properly fulfil her duties. In the end, the Queen Mother took on a vast percentage of her duties, despite the fact that she was heavily pregnant with the late king’s daughter, Princess Daenerys. Then, Lyanna’s main duty was to provide an heir: despite her youth and good family history of fertility, none of Rhaegar’s seed quickened.

Soon, whispers spread that she was drinking moon tea secretly, that it was a curse from the gods against both she and Rhaegar for their disrespect for Elia’s memory. Long after both she and Rhaegar were dead, records emerged that she had multiple miscarriages – Rhaegar, it seems, had learned from Elia’s frequent fertility problems and didn’t spread news of any suspected pregnancies.

Three years after her and Rhaegar’s coronation, Lyanna finally became pregnant. She was described by hostile accounts as ‘walking around as smug as a cat, stroking that large belly of hers, as if the king did not have two heirs already’. Soon, she was confined to the Red Keep after she was attacked in the town, by a man who was ‘wild-eyed, and cursed her for her wickedness, before aiming a knife at [Lyanna’s] pregnant stomach’. The incident scared both Lyanna and Rhaegar, who were very careful about the health of their unborn child: Rhaegar’s most famous composition, _The Dragon Has Three Heads_ was written around this time, but it wasn’t to be published until almost a century later, due to the events that unfolded shortly after.

Lyanna went into labour in 292 AC, Rhaegar right by her side. The moment of the birth has been dramatized many times to the point that its hard to differentiate between the historical fact and the overdramatized fiction. Whilst Rhaegar did burst out of the delivery room, he did not slap Lyanna as soon as he was told the babe’s gender, or order that all the midwives were to have their eyes gouged out. He instead ordered that the midwives were to keep their silence, and paid them off handsomely.

There was no Visenya. Lyanna had given birth to a son.

To any other king, this would be wonderful news; now he had both an heir and a spare to the throne. But to Rhaegar, this put his prophecy in jeopardy – he was meant to have two daughters and one son, not two sons and one daughter. In the days that followed, a war waged within the Red Keep – the loving relationship between Rhaegar and Lyanna seemed broken within a day.

Rhaegar, having spent so many years dedicated to fulfilling the prophecy, determined that Lyanna must have had an affair, the babe being fathered by another man. He was meant to have a daughter, not a son, so this must not be his child. Genetics had not yet been discovered then, and the boy’s looks were against him: he was the picture of his mother, with no obvious Targaryen features. This did not mean Rhaegar’s theory was correct: Princess Rhaenys favoured her mother’s side of the family, as had many other Targaryens in history such as Baelor Breakspear, whilst Elia's son Aegon, who legitimacy had once been questioned, had already become the image of his Valyrian ancestors.

But Rhaegar had made up his mind: this child was not his.

Factions drew up in the court, the vast majority siding with the king: Lyanna’s popularity (or lack thereof) suddenly became a very real problem for the young queen, who was supported only by Northern lords and a few Riverlanders. Rhaegar refused to have the child named by the High Septon, given a true Targaryen name, or a title. Lyanna insisted that the babe was his child, and demanded that her son be given the same treatment as his elder siblings.

On the seventh day after his birth, Lyanna, in defiance of her husband, named the boy Jon Targaryen – her reasoning for calling him Jon being that if Rhaegar would not give him a Targaryen king’s name, then she would give him a Northern king’s name instead. She did not have him baptized in a sept, but in the godswood, with a Green Man from the Isle of the Faces - a place that she and Rhaegar had both loved once. It was a bold move – she told the whole world that not only was her son fathered by Rhaegar, but that he had royal blood on both sides of his lineage, and that she didn't need the Faith in order to have her son recognised. The king had wanted the boy to be given a bastard surname of Snow or Waters, and had been choosing between various first names that weren’t Targaryen but did have meaning to the dynasty: a Duncan or something similar, perhaps. Even up to this point, there are records of Rhaegar wanting to send the boy away but remain married to Lyanna. But with one bold move, the little Queen cut off that possibility.

For all that Lyanna had been criticized for being naive and childlike in the past, she had suddenly grown a backbone of steel. She refused each of Rhaegar’s edicts, one right after the other – she would not send the boy away. She would not admit to adultery. She would not consent to a divorce or an annulment. She would not change her son’s name. She would not beg for forgiveness, for she swore she had done nothing that needed forgiveness. Modern accounts are almost unanimous in their belief of her words: contemporary view was not so kind.

Eventually, matters came to a head. Lyanna, after refusing the king’s most recent compromise of giving up her son’s place in the line of succession in exchange for being able to return to Winterfell without being charged with treason, was seized on the way back to her stronghold in the maidenvault, and tossed into the black cells. It took Rhaegar another three moons to finally order for Lyanna’s beheading – enough time for the queen’s brothers to be called, to first pledge fealty, and then for Lord Brandon’s heir, Torrhen, to be exchanged for the queen’s apparent bastard, who went into the care of her brother Ned, the master-at-arms of Storm’s End. Torrhen Stark was officially a ward, but everyone saw him for what he was – a hostage. The North would behave, or the heir to Winterfell would die along with his aunt.

Lyanna’s beheading was the most attended of all her public events – it is said she laughed when she saw the size of the crowd as she approached the scaffold, and turned to her closest lady, japing ‘look, they finally love me!’ She went up on the erected scaffold, absolved her executioner, saying that it wasn’t his fault that the king didn’t have the strength to swing the sword himself, and again swore her innocence before the thousand strong crowd. It took the executioner two swings to fully separate her head from her body, and an old wives tale is that after the first swing, she hissed ‘gods, do the job properly or not at all.’

* * *

**Queen Lyanna Stark of the Seven Kingdoms, Lady of Winterfell, married 287 AC – 292 AC. Mother to Jon Targaryen.**


	3. Cersei Lannister

**They set thee up, they took thee down,**  
**They served thee with humility;**  
**Thy foot might not once touch the ground,**  
**And yet thou wouldst not love me.**

* * *

Rhaegar took longer this time around to select a bride, perhaps because of the disastrous ends to both of his marriages, perhaps because he had two legitimised heirs and another that was disputed, perhaps because of the precedent set by Lyanna Stark’s execution: if his next queen did not give him a daughter, she could be the next to the chopping block under the same charge.

A year after Lyanna’s execution, Lady Cersei Lannister, daughter of Aerys II’s long serving hand Tywin Lannister was officially selected to become Rhaegar’s third queen. It was no secret that this had been an aspiration of Lord Tywin since before the girl had flowered: and many wondered why Aerys hadn’t engaged the two, especially when the Lady came to King’s Landing, beautiful, a little aloof, but clearly enamoured with Rhaegar.

However, there was a problem in the picture perfect match: Cersei Lannister had been taught that her child would be king someday, and Rhaegar already had one acknowledged son and daughter, and one claimed-son who could yet be Daemon Blackfyre come again – with an even better claim than the original Targaryen bastard had, some would argue. She had to give birth to a girl to survive, and apparently no others – her child would be last in the line of succession, and that was something Cersei could not abide, and neither could her father, Lord Tywin.

Barely a few moons into Rhaegar’s third marriage, ‘accidents’ began to occur in the Red Keep. Jon Connington, Rhaegar’s Hand, wrote of one such occurrence in his diary: _the servants are still whispering about a haunting. They believe it is Lyanna, going after Rhaegar’s heirs. For all her faults, Lyanna doted upon the little ones: and there is no such thing as ghosts. It is still concerning however: today, a suit of armour that had stood tall and proud for years crumbled, almost striking the young prince. Princess Rhaenys swears she saw a figure following her in the gardens two days ago. We try to be vigilant, but something is clearly afoot._

The mystery was very abruptly solved when Jaime Lannister was found, holding Prince Aegon over a balcony, as if frozen. His white sword brothers eventually coaxed the young kingsguard back until the prince was safe, and the boy collapsed, weeping, saying he couldn’t do it. Ser Jaime was held in the white sword tower for questioning, but flung himself out the window and to his death before he could be interrogated.

How Cersei Lannister survived the scandal, we will never know, but her father’s money is widely thought to be the most probable cause – instead of meeting Lady Lyanna’s fate, she and Rhaegar were granted an annulment – an incredibly rare occurrence that, nevertheless, would be granted to Rhaegar once more.

Cersei lived a quiet life after her brief stint as queen – she ended up marrying one of her own cousins, and had many golden haired, green eyed children – she named her firstborn son Jaime, leading some historians to make claims of incest between the twins, but the evidence for this is thin, if not nonexistent. Nevertheless, Cersei was said to be ‘diminished’ after her twin’s death – her death was rather scandalous, because she was strangled in her sleep, and her killer was never found. Many people blamed the king, although it was never proven.

* * *

**Queen Cersei Lannister of the Seven Kingdoms, Lady of Casterly Rock, married 293 AC – 293 AC. Mother to Jaime Lannister, Myrcella Lannister and Tommen Lannister.  
**


	4. Lysa Tully

**'Tis, I will pray to God on high,  
** **That thou my constancy mayst see,**  
**And that yet once before I die,**  
**Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.**

* * *

 

Rhaegar was reluctant to marry again, but persevered: he still needed his Visenya. Thus he decided he would not wed a strong woman again, and remembered his days with quiet, dutiful Elia with fondness, and a touch of nostalgia – perhaps forgetting the bitter end of that union. His fourth wife, and third queen, was considered by many to be beneath the new king even though she was the daughter of a great house – Lady Lysa Tully had never before been married, but had given birth to a bastard daughter before she was eight and ten, and had never named the father of her child (although gossip pointed to the babe being fathered by her father's ward, Petyr Baelish, who was sent away from Riverrun immediately following Lysa giving birth).

Lysa’s only apparent condition on her coming to court to wed Rhaegar was that her daughter came with her: a condition Rhaegar agreed to – something that was quite a scandal at the time. Rhaegar probably felt that as Lysa already had a bastard, she was done with her wildness: he often compared her to Lyanna, something the redhead was known to loathe. Still, the story goes that he loudly reminisced when drunk that if Lyanna had been as honest as Lysa was about her bastard, perhaps they would still be married.

Little Alayne Rivers was the same age as Lyanna's 'bastard' Jon Snow (as he was referred to in court), and Rhaegar was said to dote on the child, perhaps thinking of her as the daughter he could have had with Lyanna. It was around this time that Rhaegar began sending letters to Ned Stark at Storm's End, apparently demanding to know about 'the boy' and his progress, claiming interest due to how strongly he loved Lyanna, not due to any doubt that 'the boy' belonged to him. There was never any evidence of correspondence - Rhaegar simply sent letters, and didn't seem to expect anything back after a while. Soon he wrote about his day; about the children; about how he was reminded of his first queen when he went around the castle. One of the only references to these letters ever reaching Storm's End was in the diary fo Maester Cressen, maester at Storm's End: _more ravens from KL. Ned upset, Robert furious. Burned with the others. Boy is oblivious, thank the gods._

Lysa is the least known of Rhaegar's queens, maybe because compared the rest of them, she was a little too normal to make it into the highlights of history. She was shy, with a gloomy temprament that matched the king's, and spent a lot of her time bonding with Prince Viserys who was closest with her in age in the palace, even though there was still many years between the two of them.

Princess Rhaenys took the most umbridge to her father's most recent wife: she made no secret of her opinion that her step mother was a whore and below her father's interest. When confronted by the queen, Rhaenys was said to have laughed. "Do you think a little thing like you can scare me? I have known your like before, but you truly are a pale copy of the others."

These cruel words are ones that have stuck to Lysa throughout the ages, even though her father forced Rhaenys to apologise the next day. A year and a half into the marriage, the Grand Maester began to write about 'the Queen's hysteria'. Lysa would sleepwalk through the Red Keep in her nightgown at night. Clumps of her hair began to fall out; Pycelle's diagnosis was an unsettled soul. Eventually, Lysa's sister Catelyn, married to Lord Brandon Stark, was called down to the capital to help care for her sister, and in exchange her son Torrhen would go back to Winterfell, a full decade earlier than had been planned. Rhaegar was at his wit's end: the word of the queen's delicate mental state had begun to leak out of the castle walls, and it was only so long until the truth came out: that he had married an insane woman.

On a calm autumn night, a week before her and Rhaegar's second anniversary, Lysa disappeared. It was only when Rhaegar emerged from the Red Keep the next morning, annulment in hand, that the people of King's Landing truly learned about how the 'Pale Queen' had been sent back to Riverrun, after she and the king 'found no love' between them. Lysa died the next year, apparently of a broken heart, as her bastard daughter Alayne was kept in the capital by choice of the king and her grandfather Lord Tully - neither trusting Lysa with the child anymore.

* * *

**Queen Lysa Tully of the Seven Kingdoms, Lady of Riverrun, married 295 AC - 297 AC. Mother to Alayne Rivers.**

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a link to the full lyrics of Greensleeves, which has far more verses than I remember it having when I was taught it in Junior School: http://www.sixwives.info/greensleeves-lyrics.htm  
> Here's the link to the prompt on Valar Morekinks: http://valar-morekinks.livejournal.com/6487.html?thread=2578263#t2578263  
> And just below this box is the comment box! I'd love to know what you think :)


End file.
